


you'll have gone so far (will you leave me here, dying?)

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gaius-centric, Gen, Loss, M/M, Merlin finale spoilers, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’ll have your favourite meal waiting for you." And Gaius has—for years. 9k+, Gaius/Merlin father-son relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll have gone so far (will you leave me here, dying?)

**Author's Note:**

> Pretentious title is pretentious. As always, I suck at this. This fic feels like a draft still after having gone over it x-times, edited everywhere. I probably won’t ever be satisfied with it, which is why I’m just throwing its bones to the dogs now. Dunno what to think about this Gaius, the progression of the fic, etc. Blah. Hope at least some of you find something worthwhile in this.

_Don't leave me, even for an hour, because  
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,   
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift   
into me, choking my lost heart._

_because in that moment you'll have gone so far  
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,   
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?_

Don’t Go Far Off—Pablo Neruda

 

When Percival returns—bearing death upon his strong shoulder, grief slowing his gait—Gaius observes him carefully. He watches the hard set of the knight’s jaw and the dark of those eyes, and something tightens in his chest, painfully. He forgets to breathe; to him, Percival’s manner instantly precedes all questions. 

Percival lays the cold corpse of Gwaine to his lady’s feet and bows to her. He does not speak.

“I must thank you for returning Gwaine to our ranks,” Guinevere says at last into the silence of the throne room, voice loud and clear. Dimly, Gaius thinks Arthur has taught her well. Or maybe he has never needed to teach her; she has been Queen in heart all along. “I am sure it is what he would have wanted. We shall prepare a funeral pyre for him, come morning.”

The knights incline their heads before their dead brother, silent as a dark chasm. Only one does not, and only one does speak; Leon. Gaius sees the white knuckles on his hands as he grips the hilt of his sword. “I believe, my Queen,” he is saying, blinking fast, “and I surely wish not to contradict or disrespect you—but Sir Gwaine, so I believe, would have preferred a bed of leafs in the woods. By sunrise. Where it is green. And he would not have us sing for him, but the birds. I—I believe, I believe I remember him saying—late at night, in the tavern, when the King did not have us train early—I believe I remember him saying it was the shrill call of the Merlin falcon that he was thinking of. Because it—because it is loud and resonant and alive in its harshness. I—that is what I believe, my lady,” he says and at last his voice grows quiet, a barely-heard murmur. “Please forgive me for speaking.”

“There is nothing to forgive, Sir Leon,” Guinevere says and inclines her head in respect towards the older knight. “It has merely shown that perhaps it is rather you and your knights who should administer the regulations of Sir Gwaine’s farewell, our once-noble and brave knight. Would—”

“You are wrong.” 

Guinevere is quiet, at once. Her mouth is still opened as though she has merely forgotten what she wanted to say next, and after a long pause, she closes it. Her eyes follow everyone else’s and come to rest on the knight kneeling before her, trembling with exhaustion and fatigue. 

She clears her throat. “Yes, Sir Percival?”

“You are wrong,” Percival says, and his voice is fearless, unimpressed with the royalty before him, forgoing the manners he should show. But the battle field shows no manners, and it is only you and your opponent, fighting to death. Gaius sees it in the haunted look on his face. To Percival, they are all ghosts here, ghosts in the royal court, the great hall; to Percival, Camelot is now a town drifting in the mists, insubstantial and intangible. His words echo back from the stone walls, drawn up high and imposing around them. “It is not once-noble. Sir Gwaine is noble even in death.” He draws himself up, and looks around himself. He is speaking loudly, as though he needs the whole of Camelot to hear. Perhaps, Gaius thinks, it is not the battlefield he sees but the diminishing life of Gwaine’s eyes. He wonders what it must be like, to be trapped in a living nightmare. Not his strongest sleeping draught could possibly be of any use, here. “It is not once-noble,” Percival repeats in his stoic voice and his eyes fall on the fallen man before him. “Sir Gwaine is noble even in death, for he has fought valiantly for our King until his very last breath.”

The great hall seems to hold its breath. No one is moving. Eyes do not blink. Throats do not swallow. Fingers do not twitch. There is a long, tense silence, heavy with the expectation of this knight’s punishment; the decades of grief-driven mad governance have left their mark, and it seems almost unreal as the moment moves on as though nothing has occurred.

“Thank you, Sir Percival,” Guinevere says at last, so softly. The knights and members of the council flinch back as though they expect the order for a public flogging to follow, but Gaius knows better. Guinevere is not Uther; she is not mad. She is neither Arthur, nor Morgana.

She is not a Pendragon. Her rule is first and foremost that of humility and kindness, and after all these years at Arthur’s side, it still comes as a surprise. King Arthur has been a fair and just ruler, moreover a merciful one; yet he has always held the strict traditions of distanced Kingship upright, and he would have at least scolded a knight of his for speaking out of order. But when Gaius raises his head and looks at the throne, it is no longer the crown upon a golden head that he sees.

Already, change has begun.

“Would you, Sir Leon, see too Sir Gwaine’s farewell? As you believe it should be, so it shall come to happen,” the Queen says and she and Leon exchange nods of acknowledgement. There is another moment of silence, and this time everyone’s eyes are on the Queen. Gaius watches the way she draws herself upright, sitting with her back straight on the throne chair. Her hands lie folded in her lap, and Gaius remembers her coming to his working rooms last night, confessing that she wished she could break the bones of her fingers to feel something other than the hopelessness spreading cancerously through her chest. Here his sleeping draught, too, has forsaken. The feeling of uselessness the realisation brings is nothing new to him. It wraps itself around his bones, heavy and bitter, a poisonous blanket that does not heat but cool. He swallows hard, once. His breathing does not ease.

“I have also heard you bring us—bring us knowledge of—of—”

He is torn out of his thoughts by Guinevere speaking. He looks up sharply, berates himself for being old and off his guard. Instead he focuses, as much as he can, on Guinevere, and finds that he is not the only one whose breathing has grown troublesome. The Queen is sitting with her mouth open again, but this time her eyes are squeezed shut tightly, and her chest is heaving. She is panting hard. Gaius immediately steps forward to her side, bends down and lays his hand on her shoulder.

“Breathe,” he advises lowly. No one else needs to hear. This is between her and him, as it has been for months. “Breathe, my lady, slowly, in and out. Remember to relax your lungs. Inhale through your mouth. Exhale through your nose. And breathe,” he says, and Guinevere must have exercised in her chambers at night, for she succeeds more quickly than usual. When Gaius is satisfied enough with the slowing of her heaving chest, he touches his palm to Guinevere’s forehead. “You are not alone,” he murmurs, “and you are strong.”

Then he takes a step back, one to the side, but remains close. Seconds pass before Guinevere takes a deep, shuddering breath and exhales through her nose. Lays her hands upon the armrests of the chair, leans slightly forward in her chair. When Gaius glances to the side to catch the look upon her face, he knows this will be worse for her than for anyone else. 

In her glimmering eyes, the tremble of her lips, against all sense, there is hope. 

Gaius closes his eyes. Oh, how foolish men can be; how self-destructive.

“I—I have heard you bring us knowledge of the King’s whereabouts,” Guinevere says in a rush. Gaius keeps his eyes closed, but he can hear her quick intake of breath, the emitting of a sound that is caught before it can form a word. He can tell the Queen is struggling to keep her composure, and he feels a fierce surge of pride; the children, how some of them have grown. 

After a pause, he hears Guinevere speak again. “Please do tell us what you know.”

Sir Percival seems to have little patience and consideration left. “King Arthur is dead,” he says, his voice monotone and inanimate, as if he were not just announcing the end of an age. “He has fallen two days ago, on the outskirts of the lake of Avalon. His demise was caused by a stab wound to his side from a blade cursed with the dark magic of Morgana. The poison was too strong, and the time too little, for him to have reached Avalon in hope of recovery. The King is dead. There is no body.”

Gaius feels the ghosts of Pervical’s tale rise around him, shrouding the great hall in silence. Even though it is not truly new information for anyone, no one has yet dared to speak the words themselves. And now that is has been done, there is nothing that is happening. Gaius recalls telling Guinevere of the prophecies that have foretold Arthur, the Once and Future King, and Emrys, the greatest sorcerer ever to walk this earth. Recalls telling her how they were pre-ordained, since before makind began counting time itself, to unite the land of Albion. Recalls Guinevere summoning the council and the remaining knights to tell them of the prophecies—all should know the truth at last, this was her belief. Everyone present in the great hall knows that Arthur and Merlin were more than mortal men; they were legends, myths. And it is true, for Gaius himself has expected something—has expected the ground beneath his feet to tear open and swallow the castle, has expected an earthquake to shake its foundations, has expected thunder to come crashing onto the castle walls so the Pendragon banners and crests would fall, alighting in a blazing fire like so many of the innocents that burnt on the pyres. Now that the words are spoken—four words, _the King is dead_ , the end of an age—the legend and myth of the King and his sorcerer resembles more a fairytale; King Arthur is no more, the centuries-old Pendragon dynasty is at its end, at last, and yet Camelot still stands. It still stands, the ground is solid beneath their feet and the sky is calm. They are still breathing. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, then set again. Tomorrow, they will still be breathing. The sun will keep rising and setting, and they will keep breathing and living. 

“So it—so it shall be,” Guinevere says, and at the tremor in her voice, Gaius opens his eyes. His gaze finds her face, finds her cheeks wet and red. She is shaking like a leaf, the Queen on her throne, and Gaius imagines he can hear her thinking: _This chair is too hard. This crown is too heavy. The place beside me is too empty._ Heartbreak is not easy to bear and ugly to behold, and Gaius steps closer again, touches Guinevere’s shoulder. “So it shall be. The King is—he is dead, and upon—upon the royal seal I—I was g-given, I will forth-forthwith be s-sole ruler of C-Camelot.” In between heavy breathing, the words stumble out of her mouth like she cannot help herself—as though she knows that if she does not say them now, she never will. The burden of the crown is hers alone now, and already the loneliness of it drives Guinevere to shoulder all the weight and disregard her sorrow. “I—I will, will strive t-to bring peace above, above all else, and, and I accept this d-duty with gratefulness, and, and… and…” 

Gaius knows no medication will be able to cure this ache. But he knows the human mind, knows that sometime rest and privacy are a necessity above all else.

“I believe this can also wait until tomorrow,” he interrupts Guinevere’s stammering, and his hand on her shoulder tightens. He clears his throat, draws himself upright and hopes he looks not too much like an old fool that is easy to ignore. “There are things to be done. There is order to be restored, survivors to be sought, wounded to be treat. We must not waste time, cannot afford it. I believe I speak on the Queen’s behalf when I say the council is dismissed now,” he says, but it is no question. There is an awkward shuffling of feet before the first move out of the hall. Gaius catches some of the knights glancing at Gwaine’s corpse. One of them makes a move towards it as if to gather it up, but the others shake their heads mutely and nod towards Pervical. After that, they leave. Leon remains behind, the pain in his eyes bright and the urge to support his Queen obvious in his stance. He chooses duty before desire, and Gaius smiles to himself, faintly. Some things will never change.

At last, it is only himself, Guinevere and Percival still kneeling before Gwaine’s corpse that remain. The silence remains unbroken. Guinevere’s crying is inaudible, tears running ceaselessly down her face. When Percival takes a last, bland look at Guinevere, he shrugs his shoulders and scoops Gwaine’s corpse up in his arms. Then he turns his back to her and walks, steps long and calm, towards the door.

Before he is out of them, Guinevere manages a brittle “Wait, please.”

She braces her weight on her hands and lifts herself out of the throne with the strength that still remains in her shaking arms. Gaius catches her as she takes a hasty step and almost falls to the ground.

“My lady, I am not sure this is—”

“I—I need to know this,” Gwen says brokenly and Gaius looks her in the fact carefully. Her teeth are bared in a grimace, the laughter lines in her face deep with it. Gaius has seen many faces and many things. The need expressed on Guinevere’s face makes something hook inside his chest, pulling painfully. He nods. Whatever it is, she does need to know. She may never rest, otherwise. 

He supports her by holding her arm and together they walk towards Percival, who watches them blankly. All propriety and rank mean nothing to him anymore—he has been stripped of such things, finds no use left in them. The hollowness in his pallid face is frightening, and Gaius resolves to care for him, first. After Guinevere.

“Was he—I need to know if Arthur, if he was—Percival, was he alone?” Guinevere says, and she reaches out to Percival, holds hard onto his shoulder. Looks him directly into the eyes. When she speaks next, her voice is hoarse, rough with tears. “Did—did Arthur die—did he die alone?”

For a very long moment, Percival remains unmoving. He does not nod his head, blink, or shuffle on his feet. Merely keeps looking straight into Guinevere’s eyes, and when Guinevere cannot stand it anymore, a violent shudder runs through her body and she almost doubles over from the ache. With her hand on Percival’s shoulder, she claws her fingers into his skin and bites so hard onto her lip Gaius is surprised she has not yet drawn blood.

She draws a deep, short breath, and speaks on the exhalation, voice breathy and high. “Was Arthur alone?”

This gets a reaction. Percival’s eyes flicker back and forth over Guinevere’s face, as if he were assessing her. He seems to find what he needs, and Gaius thinks he understands, now. Percival has been looking for a way to communicate, because for all he sees, there are still ghosts everywhere, and he is the only one alive. For a few moments, through the language of loss, the only way he understands Guinevere or any of them, Percival returns.

“No, he was not alone,” he says in a murmur, and Gaius has never heard a softer voice in all his life. “Merlin was with him.”

_Merlin._

It takes all of Gaius’ strength to concentrate on Guinevere instead of his own suddenly pounding heart. He catches the Queen just in time as she sinks onto the ground in a mess of silk, and presses her hands to her face. Sobs are torn out of her throat, loud and harsh in the large, empty hall.

“Guinevere,” Gaius says quietly and barely registers Percival leaving. His old bones make it is a struggle to kneel beside Guinevere to hold her, but he manages. He draws her to himself, lets her cry into his chest. Her sobs turn strange, after a while, and almost Gaius fears another loss of control over her breathing. Or perhaps, for it is not so rare, the loss of control over her mind. Sorrow does strange things. All of Camelot has seen the wicked disasters a mind stricken with loss has wrought before.

But when he pushes Guinevere away from him to remind her to breathe, he is surprised.

The Queen is laughing amongst the tears, fisting his tunic and shaking her head.

“He wasn’t alone,” she half-cries and half-laughs in wonder and leans forward to rest her forehead against his chest. “He wasn’t alone,” she repeats to herself almost as though she cannot believe it. 

Then, “Oh Gods, thank you—thank you, thank you, Merlin, oh Gods thank you.”

_Merlin._

And Gaius believes perhaps he too has fallen into a craze; he hears the name, spoken for one of the first times in days outside of its litany inside his own head, and it brings a smile to his face. It is such an effort to keep his lips stretched into what feels like a grimace. _Merlin._ The burn of hope, so foolish, stings his chest and throat.

\---

Gaius’ memory of the days after the King’s death is foggy, flickers of consciousness like a torch bickering in the wind. He works through the days—so silent—with an impression of overwhelming relief that is as light as air, and the thought of _my boy, my boy is alive._

The nights are different.

The relief still holds, but in the darkness of his quarters, it gains a more unreal quality. The shadows in the corners grow the longer he watches them, and he tries hard to concentrate on his work. Frequently he is successful and rarely unsuccessful. At times, his mind keeps re-playing Arthur’s laugh and Merlin’s ensuing smile, so exasperated and fond, and when he lies down to sleep, there is an uncomfortable, heavy feeling sitting like sickness in his stomach. He falls asleep late, when the cooks and kitchen servants awake, and in his dreams he sees Merlin. Standing on the lakeside of the Avalon isle, watching the silent water ripple with blank eyes; crouched underneath a tree, curled in on himself, sobbing silently; walking along a wide field, summoning thunder storms as he screams out his loss at the world, desperate, desolate. Of whatever setting he dreams, it is always Merlin; always Merlin, shoulders hunched, eyes swollen with grief, chest wrecked with pain. Always Merlin, always alone.

He would like to think the more time passes, the less frequent those dreams become. But it is a lie. Instead, every night, he takes sleeping draughts so he can sleep with an empty mind; every morning, when he awakes to the sound of chirping birds, he allows himself to indulge in the mind-numbing worry of Merlin’s absence by making apple-cinnamon oat-porridge. When he leaves, it is a with a hot bowl of Merlin’s favourite meal waiting on the table, sweetened with three fingertips of cinnamon, one of sugar and one of salt.

There is so much work to do, and so little time. Once a week at dawn, Leon returns with his knights and brings wounded soldiers on horseback or in wooden carts. Gaius has ceased counting, merely lets the quill scratch over parchment, listing down the names of the survivors and the fallen. Nothing is forever, but this list seems to be. There is so much death within the castle walls, so much death he cannot stop. After all these years, he still has not successfully abandoned the feeling of frustration that makes the breath in his throat catch, when his hands fail to heal, when his remedies fail to work. He sees no accusation in the Queen’s eyes when he reports to her, only sorrow and fury at Camelot’s impotence. Guinevere holds up wonderfully; she takes the grief with her inside her chamber walls and remains sane. She remains so much saner than many kings and queens before her would have done in her stead, but there is no time for pride in Gaius’ chest. She does what she must, as does he—forcefully banishing any stray thoughts that threaten to spoil the rigid routine of these days.

Camelot is a stronghold that has witnessed many terrors. Undead armies, fantastic beasts, ancient powerful sorcerers, treacherous spells, droughts, famine. She has always recovered from natural and supernatural catastrophes alike; rock on rock, her foundations are still solid. Her banners still flap in the wind, erected with all the pride of Camelot’s long-past kings and queens. When his chambers fill with the wounded, the smell of blood sweetly, bitterly cloying the air of his small four walls, Gaius has to take a moment for himself and close his eyes. He needs to breathe in deeply and concentrate on the darkness behind his eyelids, make the conscious decision of not thinking. Yet, sometimes the thought manages to slither past, like a poisonous snake finding its prey through thick undergrowth, ambushing silently and painfully, a bite to his ankle with fierce fangs that upsets his balance and makes him fall: As Camelot’s queens and kings are bound to fall, will Camelot itself fall?

But she does not. As days pass into weeks, Camelot begins healing. The Queen begins to breathe more easily. The knights begin to walk straighter. The market begins to fill with sounds again; the shrill cries of hungry babies in the morning drown out the whispered farewells, apologies, sympathies. People return to bargaining and trading with the vendors. Slowly, the cool breezes of wind that waft through Gaius’ windows wipe away the traces of decay.

Camelot does not fall, and it is a near wonder. They have lost so many in number and even more in spirit. These days, the people dare regard the royal court with hope; the council has begun gathering regularly again, and audiences are held. Guinevere, whom Gaius still teaches breathing techniques before nightfall in her chambers, is, though lonely, a regal and noble monarch that masters the oftentimes pitying, still more frequent doubting and very few appraising looks of the visiting nobility adamantly. Camelot does not fall and begins, again, to flourish. So many things have changed, so many things will change, and Gaius swallows the lump in his throat expertly when he passes the royal court and his eyes get caught on the balconies. Sometimes, it feels only as if it had been yesterday that his old friend, the mad king, decreed yet another burning. Gaius sees him still, that stern slash of his mouth, the coldness in his eyes. Remembers that iron heart, so fragile and soft at the centre, poisoned through loneliness and regret. Yes, he sees him still, and he sees his crown; sees his crown upon his son’s golden head, the regal curve of a softer mouth, a strong jaw, capable hands and such a noble, honest heart. Their memories dance around him like impish forest spirits, so vivacious they are almost real. And when he tries to touch them, his outstretched hand trembling in the air and closing around nothing, it hits him—leaning heavily on his walking staff, the air punched out of his lungs—how wrong it is. How wrong it is that the old live and the young die. Thet he should have survived two generations. The loneliness of this knowledge wears him down, down, down.

Yet, he has become old. His eyes become dry with the effort of reading the complex brewing instructions of his medical books, and the endless writing of the names of those that have fallen. Sometimes he forgoes the sleeping draught and works into the dark hours of the night instead, by the diminishing flicker of the candle. He applies mint-salve on his trembling, spindly fingers, tries to disregard the way his own skin feels like parchment. He is old, that he knows; he has deceived himself in many things, the truth sometimes too bright for his eyes, but this is not one of them. He is old, his bones are creaking, his muscles softening, his skin sagging. He has been old for such a long time.

When he lays down the quill or closes his books in the early morning hours, he folds his hands in his lap and stares at them. The pain in his bones reaches deep, settles into his marrow like a parasite, multiplies at an alarming rate. His working rooms are silent. There is not a sound to hear. There is not a sound to make. Gaius is alone, and in the twilight between day and night, when things are possible and impossible, when thoughts are dreams and dreams are thoughts, he swallows hard. Lets himself look at the small old wooden chair stowed behind the door, eyes caught on the bowl resting there. The bowl is clean, now; he always cleans it when he comes home after a long, hard day, and finds its contents untouched.

It has been days. Days that have turned into weeks. There is so much work, and so little time to think. He must not think. Must not think of the small empty antechamber that he has not entered once. Must not think of the blue tunic, thrown haphazardly over the chair. The unmade bed—always, always unmade, and now Gaius will not be able to speak harsh words about the state of the room, not anymore, because there is no one left to clean it. There is no one left to wear the clothes hanging in the cupboard, no one left to use the magic book underneath the bed.

Gaius has become old, old and foolish. For in the twilight hours between night and dawn, he sometimes asks the emptiness of the room, “Where are you?”

Frequently, “Please be okay.”

More often, “Camelot needs you. You must return.”

Once in a while, “Please do not do anything foolish.”

Rarely, a simple, “My boy…”

He never says “I need you here,” because those words are echoed in every pulse of his heart.

\---

Months later, he receives a letter from Hunith. It is short and concise.

_Dear Gaius,_

_I hope this letter finds you healthy. Ealdor fares well for this time of the year, and there is plenty of food for the children. Another village not far from ours has joined us and we have grown in size. It is nice to have more people to talk to, even if everyone is spreading rumours about me, the mother of the strange boy. It is okay. Not all of them do listen, after all._

_Two weeks ago, I broke my left leg and could not care for my crops properly. An old man visited our village and asked to stay with me. He never once looked me in the eye. My leg is better now, and even through my negligence, none of my crops have grown rotten. I will have enough food for winter, now._

_The old man vanished without a further word, but I believe he wanted you to have this, as he left it behind._

_You have my deepest gratitude, for as long as I live._

_Love, Hunith_

There is a small, wrapped package. Everything is silent as Gaius unfastens the thin leather laces with trembling hands. Inside, there is a red cloth. A red kerchief.

For the first time in years, Gaius feels his cheeks grow wet.

\---

Seasons change as winter becomes summer becomes spring becomes autumn. Camelot has healed, mostly. Sixty-four months after King Arthur’s death, there is a new man by the Queen’s side. Gaius wishes her and Leon well, and the whole of Camelot regards the union with warm hearts; there has been enough bloodshed, and no one under Queen Guinevere’s rule will ever doubt the importance of honesty and love again. Gaius has never seen Camelot this peaceful before, and he has lived here for quite a few years, after all.

So many things change, and Gaius cannot possibly keep up with them. He has resigned his post, and the new court physician is a middle-aged, wise man that advises the Queen well. Under these circumstances, Gaius could not have wished for someone better. Guinevere visits him frequently, and Gaius understands her. Between all the changes, the heart yearns for the past, the familiar, the known. It is a silent ache, bittersweet, clinging to the ribs, against which no medication but time knows to help. Guinevere speaks of state matters to him, and Gaius, in answer, speaks of what he knows Uther would have done, and what he thinks Arthur would have done. Often, she offers him chambers in the royal corridors besides her own; speaks of its open fires in the fireplaces, the soft seating of the chairs, and says, laughingly, that he would be doing her a favour, because then she would not have to freeze during her visits in his old quarters, come winter. Gaius smiles at her, pats her on the back of the hand and shakes his head. Some days after he has declined Guinevere’s offer a fourth time, he comes home, having collected herbs with one of the maids, to see his old hay mattress lying on the ground before the door. Not a moment later four burly servants emerge from his house and unceremoniously tow it away. Affronted, Gaius enters his chambers to see another mattress on his old bed frame—a royal mattress, as soft and luxurious as nothing else Gaius has ever felt. 

When he sometimes declines the servants Guinevere sends daily to invite him to dinner at the court, they simply return, an hour and a half later, with a plate of warm, rich food and a bowl of warm cider. Some things change, but Guinevere’s heart is not among them.

She means well, he knows; and for all he appreciates that, there are some things he will not allow her to take from him. As the years pass, Gaius grows older and older. It becomes an effort to rise in the morning, bones frail with age and use. The yellowing of his skin has grown, dark spots spreading over his arms. His leathery skin bunches around the furrows of his laughter lines, so deep, so deep. His eyes forsake him, and at times he sees in grey. His hands shake so badly sometimes that he is scared of holding a knife. His spirit is weakening, he can feel it.

Still he freezes when, one morning after he awakens, there is a steaming bowl of oat porridge already standing on the desk. He swallows hard, approaches the bowl with a pounding heart. It is a new bowl, one of the royal kitchens, the Pendragon crest a stark red against the white china. Stirring the food, the faint smell of cinnamon and mashed apple pieces wafting through the air and creeping up his nose makes him sick, and bile rises to the back of his throat. In a flash of movement, the expensive china lies broken on the floor, its contents spilled everywhere. Gaius stares at it, heart pounding through his entire body, and the loneliness and crazed fear make him breathe in sharply, make his blood rush madly; the intensity of it makes him feel alive, more alive than he has felt in years.

He cleans the mess with trembling hands and forces his thoughts to a standstill as he opens all the windows. He freezes through the biting winter wind until the smell is no more. Seeting the kettle to heat, he reaches for an apple. He begins slicing it, movements slow and deliberate, then mashes it with the pestle in his mortar until at last it is a sweet-smelling, fruity lump. The process soothes him; he scarcely needs to concentrate, the movements of his fingers deft and precise, performing the task with a well-known ease that speaks of routine. 

And then he sits down on the bench at dawn, hands folded underneath his chin as he watches the door, with the steaming bowl of apple-cinnamon oat porridge on the table before him, and waits.

Waits, as he has done for the last 2,332 days.

\---

It happens when time is no longer a concept Gaius can understand.

He lies in his bed and is not capable of moving much, only perceives a sound from nearby; the scraping of the door over the stony ground, perhaps. By the angle of the sunlight in his room, Gaius estimates the day to be young. Eight or nine, he guesses, on a beautiful spring morning. It makes him smile. His bones tell him it is time to go. Still his every pulse throbs heavy with _I need you here_ , but need is not enough to keep a body alive that should have been long rotten. Gaius has pushed his body to the precipice, beyond the possible into the impossible. It is time to go, he knows, on this beautiful spring morning; he could not have hoped for a more beautiful day. What better time is there, for old and broken things to leave, than on the cusp of warmth, amidst blossoming things?

But age has made him greedy; greedy and selfish and irrational, like a man drowning his sorrows in the tavern, or a murderer satisfying his vile urges in other peoples’ blood. He does not want to leave. He _cannot_ leave. Not now, when he has waited for such a long time. Not now, when he has braved loneliness only with the memory of a youthful smile and merry eyes in the back of his mind. He has not seen him in years. He has stopped counting. Still he needs him here, still there is the litany of _Merlin_ in his mind as it has been that fateful day when he told the boy he would have his favourite meal waiting for him. And wait for him it still does; at last, unable to hold the knife much longer himself, he has allowed Guinevere to care for the early bowl of oat-porridge to wait on the table in his chambers. He remembers—the oat-porridge, only in the wooden bowl because it was _his_ , will forever be his—three fingertips of cinnamon, one of sugar, one of salt. He does not want to leave, cannot leave, for as long as he remembers this.

He is torn out of his thoughts as there is another sound. An ugly, ugly sound. It is like scrunching gravel or gritting teeth. He does not know why, but he has the distinct idea of a gnarled hand—long and spindly elegant fingers—holding the back of a chair and dragging its feet carelessly over the ground, not bothering to lift it. It screeches in Gaius’ ears, and despite the effort, it makes him pull a face.

“Stop making… such a racket,” he spits past dry lips, voice hoarse and unused. He does not speak much, these days. There is only silence he holds for the servants or for Leon, and even Guinevere hears him speak merely twenty words a week, if at all. Still—the noise is abominable, and Gaius cannot possibly imagine who would have the sheer insolence to disturb an old man’s ears so. The servants and Leon and Guinevere, when they come to care for him, tip-toe around him as though he were made of fragile glass. They touch him hesitantly, barely-there brushes of fingers, and at times it has made Gaius’ eyes burn. He is not real, not to them. He is like a ghost they see through, a relict of another past they do not know. And perhaps they are right. Perhaps he is.

That does not change the fact that he longs for a substantial touch, for someone to make him real.

“Are you deaf?” he complains when the noise only grows louder. He curses the intruder under his breath, and when the noise suddenly stops and there is only silence, Gaius’ heart stills. It is a sudden shock, to be given, so abruptly, what he has asked for. 

It makes a shiver course through his body that has nothing to do with the sickness and the pain of age.

“You certainly have become an old nagging fusspot,” someone says, not too far away from him. Gaius does not know the voice, only notices that it is old and male. Someone leans over him then, and a heavily wrinkled face hovers over him, eyes peering out from underneath bushy eyebrows. There is a pinched mouth hidden somewhere in the mess of a long, grey beard.

It takes Gaius a moment to place the face, but even after all these years, he would recognise those blue eyes anywhere.

“Mer—Merlin!” he gasps, the name wrenched from his lips against his will. It is strange to say it, this specific combination of consonants and vowels, and entirely beautiful to feel his lips purse with the M, his tongue press against the roof of his mouth with the L, against the back of his front teeth with the N. It makes something bloom inside his chest that he has believed long dead—it makes warmth spread, slow and heavy, along his limbs, and again he shivers with the feeling. He has not felt this warm in a long, long time.

The moment is surreal—how long has he been waiting for this, this precise moment?—but Gaius will not question it. The joy of seeing his boy overrides anything else. 

“Not a foolish old fusspot at least, I see,” Merlin says, and those thinned lips twitch into a crooked smile. “Now sit up. I can’t watch you lying lazily about like a sack of potatoes.”

“I—I can’t,” Gaius says, swallowing hard. “My body—”

“Nonsense,” Merlin interrupts him, and then touches him, none too gently and yet gently enough not to hurt. It burns Gaius’ skin through the layers of clothing, makes the tips of fingers tickle with something sweet, something playful. It is magic, Gaius realises, magic that winds itself through his body like it has never left, tingling in his veins and wrapping itself around his sick, rotten lungs. Merlin helps him sit up and for the first time in years, the ache in his back is not overwhelming. Those strong, wiry hands make him sit with his back to the wall, his pillow pushed behind his neck to shelter his skull. His head lolls a little to the side, helplessly, and Merlin places his hand against Gaius’ jaw and presses the bone there. When he withdraws his hand, Gaius’ head holds perfectly still in place and does not feel as though a single movement to the right would make the bones in his neck snap.

Sitting upright, Gaius can see all of Merlin. He is undoubtedly an old man—older even than Dragoon, perhaps, the old wizard in disguise that he used to be. His features are altered, face rounder, cheeks flat and nose longer, more crooked. There is nothing left of that plush mouth and plump lips, only a wide, unimpressed straight line of thin lips. The beard is overwhelmingly long, and when Merlin sits down in the chair he has dragged over to Gaius’ bed, Gaius can see it disappear in his lap. Merlin’s eyebrows are darker in colour than the beard, more gray than white, bushy above the eyes. 

The eyes, though the same in shape and colour, are also different. Gaius has imagined them many, many times—has expected sorrow to darken the irises, loss to push the upper eyelid down, making it heavier and heavier. He has always expected fatigue to carve dark blue crescents underneath. The eyes he sees now, though, are still a vibrant blue, still as awake and intelligent as ever, but what he sees is much, much worse. It makes his heart hitch another time to realise the sheer _depth_ in all that blue, and for a moment Gaius thinks of lying chained to the bottom of the ocean, drowning slowly to the weight of water that he cannot escape. The blue is deep and hollow, so hollow, so joyless and lost. Gaius cannot possibly fathom what those eyes have seen, and he cannot take it away. He never could.

“I’m not the same, Gaius,” Merlin says after a long while. Says it softly as though he were apologising, as though he were a disappointment for whatever Merlin thinks Gaius has expected him to be. “Obviously,” he adds dryly and gestures to his beard, an attempt to lighten the heaviness around them.

They both know it will not last long. Gaius is lying in his death bed, and Merlin has come to say goodbye. The time for long conservations and reconciling has passed, and maybe Merlin has never been interested in it to begin with. It saddens Gaius when he thinks about how the man before him is trapped. Trapped just like he himself has been, to another age, to the memory of the crown upon a golden head. Merlin is young no more, this Gaius sees, and the old sense of fury wells up inside him, the same question he has asked himself so many, many years ago. What has this boy done to deserve any this? Gaius cannot take any of it away, and he has failed, has failed as a mentor, has failed a friend…

“Gwaine has passed,” he says suddenly, insensitively. He remembers the joy upon Merlin’s face at the sight of the knight, remembers the ease with which they were together, and feels that Merlin should know.

“I know,” Merlin says, inclines his head slightly to the right. A sad smile is on his lips. “I have heard the birds cry.”

 _Merlin falcons_ , Gaius’ memory supplies slowly, and for a moment he wonders at the absurd things he remembers. But he knows that this matter has never been an absurd one, and at the look of Merlin’s face, he knows he needs not say it—Merlin already knows, knows the importance of it. Briefly, Gaius wonders whether he should speak of Guinevere, tell him that she is better now, that she can breathe again. Whether he should speak of Leon, who sleeps every year on the day of Arthur’s death outside the King’s old chambers. Whether he should speak of Percival, who has vanished after Gwaine’s burial and was never seen again. Dimly, he thinks Merlin probably knows better than all of them as to what happened to Percival. Gaius wonders what there is that he is can say. There is probably not much that Merlin does not already know, and Gaius is short in time.

He cannot give Merlin much. There is only one thing.

“I have your… favourite meal waiting for you,” he says, a little helpless, and feels so ashamed with the awareness of his own uselessness. Though it is not a new battle to fight, he lets his head sink, folds his hands in his laps. “On the table.”

Merlin seems to wait a moment before he stands up, slowly, to gather the bowl in his hands. When he returns, he stares so long at Gaius until Gaius raises his head at last.

“What?” he says.

Merlin’s eyebrows are drawn up high on his forehead, and he tuts. “It’s cold,” he says in an admonishing tone.

It makes Gaius laugh, against all odds, a dry, hoarse thing pulled from his broken chest. He thumps himself on the chest three times then, weakly, as his breath comes wheezing. 

“Warm it up, then,” he rasps, voice rough. “ Or… can you not?”

Perhaps Merlin recognises a bit of the teasing in there, for it pulls his lips into a small smile, and Gaius is relieved to see that, for this instant, there is no sadness. He watches, fascinated, as Merlin’s eyes glow golden. Merlin begins stirring the spoon around in the bowl and unceremoniously mixes everything together. Why Gaius has ever bothered to pour the cinnamon, sugar and salt on top of it all, he will never know. Merlin has always made a mess of it. The feeling of fondness that follows, a tight tug in his belly, is enough to make the wetness in his eyes well up. A tear spills down his cheek.

“Warm and nice,” Merlin says, dips the spoon into the oat-porridge and inches closer to the bed. He looks at Gaius’ eyes, follows the trail of his tear, and says, gently, “Open up, Gaius.”

Merlin brings the spoon to Gaius’ mouth, and the oat-porridge melts on the sides of his tongue, pasty and warm and delicious. He does not manage to catch all of it and a bit runs down the side of his mouth, like drool.

“Now who cannot?” Merlin comments lightly, and Gaius feels a pang of shame in his lower belly. 

“I—I am sorry,” he murmurs. The memory of his useless lying about, of his broken body, of being a burden weighs heavily on his mind.

Merlin seems to sense it, for he leans forward and wipes the porridge with his thumb away. His face is like thunder, outraged and irate. “Do not dare apologise,” he says lowly; a threat. “Do not dare to think you are a burden. I will make those pay who told you otherwise.”

Gaius’ lips are drawn into another smile, against his will. He allows Merlin to feed him five more spoonfuls before he presses his lips together and shakes his head. “It is for you,” he says, looking Merlin directly into the eye. “The only thing… I can still give you.”

The years have made Merlin wiser, for he does not protest. Gaius watches as Merlin hunches a little into himself, cradling the wooden bowl safely in his hands. How long he has waited for this sight, he truly cannot remember. Now that he is given it, he knows that all of it was worth it. He has been waiting for this boy to eat his favourite meal, has been waiting for years.

And yet, instead of the boy there is an old man sitting in his stead, whose eyes do not dance, whose mouth has fallen quiet. There is nothing left of the bumbling, garrulous, cheerful boy that Gaius remembers.

He knows the years would have changed him, knows Arthur’s death would have changed him irreversibly in some aspects, but this is so much worse.

He makes a noise, then, in the back of his throat, and feels anger. Pure, vicious anger. This is not what he has waited for. He has waited for _Merlin_ , not this old impostor. He has waited for the boy who has never given up, and instead he finds someone who looks very likely to have done so.

Gaius may have failed as a mentor, as a friend, but he denies failing as a father.

“You foolish boy,” he rumbles, and Merlin’s head snaps up, eyes wide as they look at him. “You foolish… foolish boy.”

“I am not a boy anymore,” Merlin says tightly, sets the spoon down. “I thought that much was obvious.”

“Your heart is still… that of a boy’s,” Gaius says, voice hoarse but cross, “for all… that you pretend to… be an old man.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Merlin says, lowers his eyes away from Gaius’ gaze. Gaius has had enough.

“Do not fool me, Merlin,” he says harshly, voice gritting over the words. “You are grieving… like a child. Have let it… change you. Let… it close you off. How many—” A cough. “—many years has it been, boy? Seven? … Eight?” Gaius stops for a moment, needs to breathe. “You have not shown yourself in… such a long time. You have… vanished into nowhere. We all… all grieve. Every… everyone of us. The Merlin… Merlin I know would not… not give in.”

“Maybe I’m not the Merlin you know anymore,” Merlin says, with all the anger and defiance of a young boy. Not so wise, then. Or maybe just hurt beyond comprehension, lost beyond everything. No, Gaius will not stand for that. Hunith has raised her boy better than that, and Gaius has taught him differently. The Merlin he knows is not a creature of soliloquy—he seeks dialogue, seeks other voices, other people. The Merlin he knows has always been made lonely at heart due to circumstances, but has never chosen to be this willfully lonesome. 

The Merlin he knows has always hidden too well, and maybe it is time to change that. Things are not as they used to be, and Merlin needs to adjust.

“Then let him return,” he says sternly. “Let him… come back.”

With that, he begins leaning forward on his palms, tries to move. His upper body over-tilts dangerously—before he hits the ground, Merlin is there, holding him by his upper arms, grip painful and tight. There is a moment full of silence and tension before Merlin makes a sound and then orders, “Rest.”

“No,” Gaius mutters into Merlin’s chest, shakes his head weakly. Oh god,but his entire body hurts. His heart is racing. There is not much time. “No, there is—”

“There is what, Gaius?” Gaius catches a flash of Merlin’s golden eyes before his magic and his hands manage to push him against the wall, and he leans back against it, like a rag doll with splitting seams. He disregards the anger and fear in Merlin’s voice. There is no time for that now. He takes a deep breath, chest rattling with it, before he speaks again. “At the head of my… mattress, under… underneath it. Look.”

Merlin throws him a suspicious, confused look before he sets the bowl to the ground and bends down. Gaius feels the mattress underneath him shift, but he still remains sitting upright. Merlin sticks his hand underneath the mattress, rummages around. Gaius knows he has found it when everything falls silent.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Merlin returns to sit in the chair. He stares down at his hands, wide-eyed and horrified, and Gaius smiles. The red kerchief.

“You must not…” Another deep breath. “You must not… forget, Merlin.” 

And apparently that was the wrong—or right—thing to say. Merlin balls his hands into fists, bunching up the kerchief. He stares at it, hatefully, pained. “I haven’t forgotten,” he says roughly. “Haven’t forgotten that I’ve failed, that it all went wrong. That history can’t be unwritten, that nothing can be changed. Because he’s dead. He’s dead, dead, _dead_ , because I didn’t—I couldn’t—I wasn’t—” The words tumble out of his mouth like a deluge before Merlin gives a cry and curls in on himself. Bowing his back, his head comes to rest on the mattress between Gaius’ legs. “I’ll never be able to forget, and I don’t want to,” he moans, wrecked, ruined, shoulders shaking. “Every single day, Gaius, I see him every single day—”

“I did not mean… that,” Gaius says. His own physical pain is diminished tenfold in contrast to that of boy’s inside. For a moment, Gaius reconsiders. It is true, then—he is not a boy anymore, but neither is he a man, yet. He is stuck in between, lost and hurt and alone, with no one to guide him. 

“Not that,” he says again, every word wheezed now. His hand finds Merlin’s head, and he closes his eyes as he imagines thick black hair instead of the rough grey mane. He combs through it, movements soothing, gentle. “Who you were. Merlin… don’t change from… who you were. Never… never change, and never… forget.”

Something about his words makes Merlin still, the sobbing fit subsiding slowly, and his shoulders cease heaving until they are shaking. Then Merlin speaks, low and pained, as if admitting a secret. Gaius strains forward to hear. “He said—Arthur, Arthur, he said—he said he never wanted me to—to change.”

And there is the answer to a question that Gaius has asked himself for years now. It makes him smile slightly, and his fingers tighten in Merlin’s hair. No, Arthur never was his father. His heart was his own, and it always was in the right place. Once and Future King, indeed. Such a shame. Such a shame this man should have died so young.

“And right he… was,” Gaius says. He can feel his heartbeat slowing, the excitement leaving his body. Merlin’s magic withdraws, even though the boy is so close and Gaius is touching him. Nothing can slow the decay of things, and nothing is eternal. Therefore, Gaius is glad. It will hurt Merlin, but Merlin is strong. Merlin will go on. He can do this.

“And the—the dragon, Kilgarrah, he said, he said that Arthur would return,” Merlin admits in a quiet rush, as if afraid of speaking those words. Gaius would not be surprised if it is the first time Merlin has ever dared speaking them aloud, never mind properly thinking about them. “When Albion, Albion is in need, he said Arthur would—would rise again.”

Merlin hiccups, and after a bit of silence, raises his head. Gaius’ hand slips from his hair to his jaw. The boy’s eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, and amongst the wrinkles so bright, so bright. “What—what if it’s not—what if it’s not true, Gaius?” he whispers, finally admits what has been weighing so heavily on his mind. Gaius knows that hope is a slow burn, the most powerful and dangerous weapon of mankind. He can understand that Merlin does not want to wield it. But perhaps it is time.

Gaius sighs, begins petting Merlin’s jaw, the grey beard rough under his fingernails. For a moment he closes his eyes, breathes in deeply. In the blackness behind his eyelids, he finds calm and listens his heartbeat, so slow. Not long, then.

When he opens his eyes a last time, Gaius speaks words he has not known before, but which he feels are true all the same. “You are the son of… the earth, the… sea… the sky.” Another long, painful, rattling breath. “Merlin. Emrys. You are… Albion.”

Gaius looks down tenderly at Merlin, and touches his fists. Merlin is unresisting, staring wide-eyed and confused up at Gaius, as if he is not quite sure whom it is that he is seeing. The red kerchief slides easily into Gaius’ trembling fingers, and Gaius uses it to wipe away Merlin’s tears. Through the wrinkles of that old face, the grey hair and the altered features, all he can see is a clean-skinned, pale boy with high cheekbones, a long nose and slender neck; a child of fairies, a child of wonders. A legend, a myth, foretold; immortal. He is all that, and he is not. Before him is just Merlin, the young boy with a burdened back, whom he can help find himself again. Not Emrys, just Merlin. The one who poured over books with him, who did foolish, brave things, whose heart is a thing of beauty, made of more nobleness than any king or queen has ever possessed. 

Just Merlin. Just his boy. Who likes his porridge with three fingertips of cinnamon, one of sugar, one of salt.

“And when you… truly need… Arthur,” he murmurs, “he will return… to you, just as… you have returned… to me, when… I needed you.”

He traces his thumb over Merlin’s forehead, and like magic, the skin smoothens underneath his touch. In mere moments, sitting before him is Merlin, not boy, not man, but unmistakably him. Black hair, pale skin, red mouth, wide blue eyes—ridiculous ears.

His boy.

His foolish, wonderful boy.

“Thank… you.” Gaius inhales a last time. On the exhale, he breathes, a smile curling along his lips, “Have faith, my… boy…”

Then he closes his eyes.


End file.
